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Q. Sulagna, I am facing serious problems in my relationship now which are affecting the relationship and also both of us.

A few details on our background:
My boyfriend is also my colleague. He is a Tamil Hindu living with his parents.
I am a catholic from Mangalore, Karnataka. His is a very traditional and orthodox family while mine’s quite liberal.

Our relationship has now become a torture for me.

It is almost a year that we’ve been together. I was in a relationship before him which was more of a Friends with Benefits type. After 4-5 months of being together he found out about my past relationship from colleagues and started making enquiries about it. I realized it’s better to put all the truth on the table now rather than a few years later, which might cause disaster. So I told him the truth, minus the details. That’s when it started.

For me it was pure shock. I watched as my partner metamorphosed into the kind of typical backward-looking misogynist Indian male I don’t want to be with. Every single day he would remember some bit of my past history and ask for minute details, then abuse me if I refused to answer and abuse me if I did. Once he even caught hold of my neck in a moment of frenzy.

He never trusts me. He wants to dictate every aspect of my life from what I can wear to who I’m allowed to talk to. And to top it all – he makes me swear all of these things on some family member.

But – and this is the embarrassing part – I can’t think of him as just another petty misogynistic abuser. He’s a wonderful person inside. Every time he misbehaves he comes back to me and begs for forgiveness with tears in his eyes.

Here’s the thing Sulagna. We love each other. For real. But my past is something he’s not able to cope with (the fact that I’m the first real sexual encounter of his life makes things that much more touchy). But I can tell you this much – I’ve never really loved anyone before.

I want to be happy again. Tell me what I should do.

-Meredith,

Mumbai

A. One of the golden rules of a happy relationship is: NEVER try to change who you are for someone you love. No matter how much you love someone, you can never live your life under a forced disguise. It will eventually get to you and cause stress in your relationship, if not an eventual breakdown.

Your boyfriend has a very high need for control in a relationship. This approach might have worked with someone else (or in some other era), but given the person you are – this is going to cause disaster because you’re not going to be able to take it lying down forever.

Now since you haven’t left him already I assume that in spite of his interference in your independence and other unwarranted actions, you care for him and want to work through this. So that’s what I’m going to help you do.

The first step to bringing a problematic relationship back on track is to start drawing boundaries.

What are boundaries?

A relationship is a mutual agreement between two people. Boundaries are terms on which this agreement is based. These are rules which both partners are to follow if they want to stay in the relationship.

How do you come up with these rules?

For that, you need to have a calm, mature discussion with your boyfriend. The objective of this discussion is to come to an agreement on the rules. Remember it’s you who’d be initiating the discussion. Hence you cannot afford to lose your cool, even if your boyfriend does. The key to creating balance in your relationship is to set its terms in the most calm and mature manner. Your boyfriend should realize that this is NOT a blame game but an honest attempt on your part to make the relationship work.

Enumerate clearly which specific behaviours of him hurt you. For example, you can tell him something like, “It hurts me if you 1. Tell me what to wear 2. Make me swear over simple things 3. Ask for details from my past.
These actions and behaviours of yours are causing me intense pain and stress. I know you care for me and you don’t want to hurt me. Hence I’m sure you wouldn’t want to continue these behaviours, now that you know how painful they are for me. So let us please agree on which behaviours you’re going to stop or modify so that our relationship can become happy and deeply fulfilling, like it was. Also, I’m more than willing to listen to and act on anything about me that’s bothering you. Let’s please talk about it.”
This way you serve two purposes:

1. Lay down clear conditions of what is acceptable to you and what is not. Your mature and calm tone should convey your firmness to him.

2. Open him up for sharing his feelings with you. Through such dialogues, you convey to him that you’re that you’re willing to help him get over whatever is bothering him.

Sex before marriage is an explosive issue in India, with emotions running feverishly high around it (just check the comments section here and you’ll know: Q&A.My wife had sex before marriage! :D) Hence, if your boyfriend is one of those guys who’re really particular about their wives’ virginity, you might have to reconsider your relationship. But before that, give yourselves a chance. If there’s true commitment, it’s possible that your boyfriend would change his views in order to accept you.

Well we all (should) know these petty facts, but I felt the need to repeat them here as I was reminded of these once again (quite forcefully), after I wrote that piece.

As you can see, there are 46 comments on that piece up till now (thanks so much guys for taking out the time to share your views :)). Let’s just say not all of those friendly commenters did me the favour because they wanted to convey their unqualified support of my views (the piece contained none, but more about that later).

These comments let me see how strongly the youth of this country feels about sex before marriage. That was quite an eye-opener. So much heated discussion started around this that I thought it’s time I gave it a little more prominence. In the form of actual posts, to be precise. So starting today I’d post my responses to some very interesting comments and questions about sex before marriage from time to time.

I’ll start with one of the very commonly raised questions:

It’s the girl’s fault to have not disclosed the facts about her past affair before marriage. Why are you silent on that?

“It’s the girl’s fault to have not disclosed the facts about her past affair before marriage.” Theoretically speaking you’re right. But knowing the practical reality of India, I think we need to go a bit deeper here before coming to a conclusion. If a prospective groom doesn’t enquire specifically about a girl’s virginity – and I’m sure you’d agree – the girl would hardly have any reason to take the initiative to convey this info to the guy. So in this case unless the guy had asked this question specifically, she had no way of knowing how particular he was about this issue.

You’re right, telling the truth is undoubtedly the right thing to do under all circumstances. But I believe if you expect anyone to tell you the truth about anything, you should provide them a safe environment for it (unless we’re talking about illegitimate activities, or activities which violate others’ rights etc.). If a person knows they might be compromising their own safety, security, mental peace etc. by telling the truth, is it really fair to hold them fully accountable for not telling the truth? (Don’t get so angry just as yet. Read on. :D)

Think of it from the girl’s perspective. With the vilification of premarital sex in the Indian society, would it have been safe for her to tell a prospective groom about her past? What if the guy announces it to her family and walks away from the relationship? What kind of consequences do you think the girl can expect, from her own family and the society? How easy do you think it would be for her family to get a guy for her subsequently?

Given the realities of our society, if a guy is too particular about his wife’s virginity pre-marriage, the onus lies on him to find out the truth without hurting the girl’s dignity. Here’s a suggestion for how you can go about it.

At a very initial stage, find a way to have a discussion with the girl alone. Tell her, “Marriage is a life-altering decision. I believe we should have a clear understanding with each other before such a decision is made. I’m sure you understand the gravity of the mistake that we would be committing if we take such an important decision on the basis of incomplete information. Given this context, I want you to know that there are certain things which are unacceptable to me when it comes to my future wife. I respect your privacy, hence I won’t ask you any questions about these aspects. I’ll just tell you what these factors are and request you to cancel the marriage from your side (telling you don’t like me) if any of this applies to you. The list goes:

1. She should not smoke/drink…
2. She should not be a non-vegetarian…
3. She should be a virgin at the time of marriage… ”

The list here is just an example (I’m by no means supporting or opposing the values espoused here). The point here is, you need to provide her a list instead of a single criterion like virginity, so that her privacy is protected. If she cancels the marriage you’d know she ticks one of your “strictly prohibited” boxes, without knowing which one.

I’m sure you understand, as one of the several prospective grooms the girl would meet in the process of her arranged marriage, you have no right to ask for private information like whether she’s a virgin. (If you don’t become her husband, you’re just another guy on the street, remember?) However, you have a right to cancel the marriage if she doesn’t satisfy your criteria (which, in this case, includes virginity). The only way to protect both her rights and yours is through mature and respectful dialogue, as suggested here.

I’ve been married for three years. It was an arranged marriage. At a very early stage I’d started suspecting that my wife had had sex before marriage. This disturbed me deeply and we’ve had innumerable discussions about this since then.

We live with my parents. Recently others in the family eavesdropped on us and unfortunately managed to listen in on some of our private conversations regarding this issue, i.e. her experience of sex before marriage. This was deeply humiliating and painful for both of us.

My father has recently taunted her with this overheard info first time in three years. I can’t tell you how guilty I feel.

At the same time I can’t drive away the visions of her having sex before marriage with another man. I find myself wondering about the details like how she managed to have sex before marriage with anyone in a small town, how deeply in love she must’ve been to have disregarded the most important family restriction, whether she gave him farewell sex etc.

She hasn’t confessed anything about any sex before marriage to this date in spite of my insistence. Whenever I ask her anything about this she gives vague replies, urging me to move on and look at the future instead of the past. I’d expressed intentions of joining Facebook and connecting with her batch mates in the hope of finding out about her past and whether she had sex before marriage. She vehemently opposed this and refused to give away even the names of her classmates. Incidentally, one of her friends visited us and hinted that my wife is “not as simple as she pretends to be”.

As of today I’ve planned to post questions about her past relationship(s) in the confessions page of her school. I’ve let her know of my intentions. This has made her very nervous and disturbed. Ironically, me too.

In spite of what all this might suggest, I love her. Genuinely. Please help me.

Sex before marriage? Don’t dwell on it

Normally I would tell you to close your eyes, take a deep breath and let it go. Usually you achieve nothing by finding out the details of your spouse’s sex-life before he/she met you. That kind of probing is guaranteed to make any relationship worse.

However, there’s another aspect to this in your case.

You’ve mentioned one of her friends has tried dropping you hints about her past. The only way knowing everything about one’s spouse’s past life can help is in tackling nosy outsiders like this friend, eager to spill the beans and laugh as the two of you shred your married life to pieces. That’s something you have a right to protect yourself against.

So the middle ground here is to know only as much as is necessary, and in this case you have a right to demand that information from your wife.

What you need to know about sex before marriage

Have an open discussion with her. Tell her first that you love her as she is, and that you have realized that finding out intricate details about her past life is not going to help your relationship. So you don’t want to know any details.
This will put her at ease.
Then mention to her that, at the same time you don’t want to receive info about her past life from outsiders and look like a fool. Between the two of you, you might have issues (every couple has). But to outsiders, you must put up a joint front – you must look like one inseparable unit. Hence you need to know at least what others know – i.e. basics like how many past relationships she’s been in, how many of them she’s had sex with and who was the last. Emphasize that you don’t want to know any details. This would increase her trust in you manifold.

Believe me Anon, you do not need to know any more than this to ward off well-meaning hints and suggestions from outsiders.

At the same time you must promise (her and yourself) never to entertain these advances from outsiders.

How to tackle “sex before marriage” blackmailers

When someone hints to you that they can give you info about your wife’s past life, the first thing you should do is change the topic and discretely make it clear that you don’t want to discuss your wife’s private life with them. Yes, I know it will be difficult to overcome your urges of curiosity in such situations but youhave to do it for the sake of your relationship.

If they persist, you might even have to tell that to them in as many words. Tell them, “If there’s anything you want to tell me about my wife, you needn’t, ’cause I already know everything about her. And I’m sure if you had to choose whom to trust between your spouse and anyone else, you’d choose your spouse. Me too. :).” That should kill their excitement as they realize you’re not going to believe anything they say.

In the rarest of rare cases, if they directly give you unsolicited information about your wife in spite of your lack of interest, you should stay calm and just say, “I already know the truth”, without confirming whether you believe them or not. (If they’re telling you the truth, they should get the impression that you already know it. If they’re making up lies they should get the impression that you can see through them.)

Sex before marriage is a private issue

Coming to the question of your parents’ reaction – you should remember that your wife is living with your parents. It’s she who’s moved to a new home and made a new family her own, not them. Hence it’s your responsibility to make sure she doesn’t receive unwarranted treatment from them. You have to make it very clear to your parents and the rest of your family that you and your wife respect them and have responsibilities towards them, but your private life is yours. And their interference in it is entirely unwelcome.
Spouses might have the right to ask each other private questions. Their parents and extended families have absolutely none.
But each Indian family works in its own complicated way (don’t take it personally, I know “we’re like that only”;)). I understand it might be impossible for you to convey this to your parents in as many words. If that’s the case, tell them politely (not in front of your wife, of course) that if they have any questions about your wife, they can ask you, not her, and not in front of her.